A Lie of the Mind is the story of two families, one in California, the other in Montana, with the rapidly-diminishing American frontier in between. These families, interlocked in love and hatred, attempt to come to terms with their past through destruction and regeneration.

Few living playwrights have attained the stature that playwright/actor/director Sam Shepard has. His 40-some plays and his 20-year career have established him as one of the theatre’s most significant writers. A Lie of the Mind is considered to be perhaps the finest of his plays. It is a dark, mysterious, broad-reaching reverie about the love that binds man and woman, father and son. Jake and Beth are warring lovers—violence drives them apart and to their respective families, where they are again enveloped by the familial madness that spawned them. Comic, yet, intense, A Lie of the Mind evokes the primal force of love.

This production, to be staged by producing director Gregory A. Falls, marks the fourth time ACT will have presented Shepard’s work. Previous Shepard plays produced at ACT include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child (1980), Fool for Love (1984), and True West (1985).